importin
Sign in to saveImportin is a type of karyopherin involved in the nuclear transport of moving protein molecules from a cell's cytoplasm to the nucleus. It does so by binding to specific recognition sequences, called nuclear localization sequences (NLS).
Key facts
- Protein.Arm
- q
- Protein.Band
- 21.1
- Protein.name
- Importin subunit beta-1
- Protein.Symbol
- KPNB1
- Protein.EntrezGene
- 3837
- Protein.HGNCid
- 6400
- Protein.OMIM
- 602738
- Protein.RefSeq
- NP_002256
- Protein.UniProt
- Q14974
- Protein.Chromosome
- 17
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
Sources (3)
via Wikidata · CC0
~10 min read
Encyclopedic overview
15 sectionsContents
- Discovery
- Structure
- Importin-α
- Importin-β
- Nuclear protein import cycle
- Cargo binding
- Cargo transport
- Cargo release
- Recycling
- Neuronal functions
- Disease
- Types of cargo
- Human importin genes
- References
- External links
Importin is a type of karyopherin involved in the nuclear transport of moving protein molecules from a cell's cytoplasm to the nucleus. It does so by binding to specific recognition sequences, called nuclear localization sequences (NLS).
Importin has two subunits, importin α and importin β. Members of the importin-β family can bind and transport cargo by themselves, or can form heterodimers with importin-α. As part of a heterodimer, importin-β mediates interactions with the pore complex, while importin-α acts as an adaptor protein to bind the nuclear localization signal (NLS) on the cargo. The NLS-Importin α-Importin β trimer dissociates after binding to Ran GTP inside the nucleus, with the two importin proteins being recycled to the cytoplasm for further use.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “importin” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.